Search: ' Latvia'

Is Russian football corrupt, internationally and domestically? That’s what Latvia’s captain was reported to have said and some clubs agree, as Dan Brennan reports

Ever since Stalin got together with Hitler to annex the Baltic states in 1940 as part of a secret carve-up, relations between Latvia and Russia have remained strained, something that 14 years of independence has done little to patch over. A Russian newspaper recently called for all good Russians to boycott Latvian tinned sprats – a culinary favourite since Soviet times – in protest at discrimination against Latvia’s Russian community. And August’s World Cup qualifier between the two countries in Riga threatened to spark a new international incident.

Read more…

Friday 1 Sir Bobby’s interpretation of the Glazers’ outlook is rejected by Mark Longden of Man Utd fans group IMUSA: “I would like them to explain how they intend to pay off £500 million-worth of debt on profits of £19m. You do not need to be a financial expert to realise something big has to happen.” Middlesbrough’s new signing, Austrian defender Emanuel Pogatetz, may receive a six-month ban for an exceptionally violent tackle while on loan with Spartak Moscow; Boro reject Spurs’ £6m offer for Stewart Downing. George Burley is the new manager of Hearts. Good news for Wayne Rooney and Dennis Wise among others as FIFA scrap the ten-yards dissent rule. Greater Manchester Police reignite their old row with Wigan over an unpaid policing bill of £273,000, threatening to withdraw the JJB Stadium safety certificate unless it is paid by August.

Read more…

Dan Brennan reports on the fall of a Soviet-era bureaucrat and rise of a new national coach, as Russians stage football revolutions at home as well as at Stamford Bridge

This spring a wind of change is sweeping through the dusty corridors at the top of Russian football. On April 2, Vitaly Mutko replaced Vyacheslav Koloskov, president of the Russian Football Union, who reigned, seemingly untouchably, over the Russian and Soviet game for a quarter of a century.

Read more…

The Vikings are leading the way in Europe: a new competition for the top teams in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is attracting plenty of interest, including from Margot Dunne

There is, as anyone who has ever witnessed the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest can tell you, a bond between Scandinavian countries born of more than a shared love of herrings, saunas and flat-pack furniture. It was perhaps inevitable that Norway, Swe­den and Denmark would sooner or later link their football together in some way as there have been mutterings about it for many years. Thus the formation of the Royal League (so named because the three nations are all monarchies) comes as no surprise. They are, after all, broadly similar countries whose football clubs face roughly the same problems.

Read more…

Small isn't beautiful in the Champions League: the cash from qualification can permanently skew the domestic game in some countries, explains Steve Menary

Has the Champions League become the European super league that the G-14 group of top clubs is pressuring UEFA for? The popular perception is that the same clubs from each country compete every year as cash from the Champions League fuels greater domination of domestic European competitions by a handful of clubs. Yet research shows this is not the case in Switzerland, Sweden, France or even Germany, where a variety of different clubs regularly enter and are competitive in the Champions League. The study ranks nations in terms of domestic variety from the least to the most, with a rating produced by dividing a country’s total amount of Champions League appearances by the number of clubs to appear.

Read more…